A lot of the veteran Heart of the Wild users may ask why I was Mastery built tonight, but it was only a test. I had napkin mathed some numbers before, but when I noticed that both Aggixx and Tinder started monopolizing on this talent... I had to give it a shot. To my surprise, I did extremely well despite being Mastery heavy.

Now, what I want to ask is this: What is recommended for 10N Elegon?Dream of Cenarius? Heart of the Wild? Haste or Mastery? (if Haste, can someone point me towards information on stat values before I pull out my pen and paper?)

By the way, I'd also like any advice on when to use Heart of the Wild during the encounter. It would be very useful.

I went Haste > Crit > everything else to check EJ's suggestions. I ended up as the ninth feral, currently I'm ranked as 16th so still not that bad. You want to pop your HotW right at the beggining along with a prepot. Stand with your spellcasters on the edge of the circle where you don't have to move to drop stacks, just jump - it taks a second or three to find a sweet spot. You should be able to pop Hotw second time, but save it for the third cycle, again paired with a potion.

Someday, someone will best me. But it won't be today - and it won't be you.

I am still not convinced that Haste really gives you any more meaningful damage using HotW. However because we have to take so much time off target to chase orbs, a bleed being left on Elegon tends to favor mastery in my eyes. On the normal 25 fight I did last week I found that I didn't have to interupt my opening HotW to drop stacks. Right about the time HotW is running out is when the first add blows up outside the circle and then I drop stacks (they get to about 12). The jumping method works as well, but I didn't find it really needed.

I'm pretty convinced that haste and crit will pull significantly ahead of mastery for a HotW build on most fights, however this fight is not one of them. Just the fact that damage stacks on the boss amplify your mastery damage for the majority of the fight make mastery a very competitive choice. However, you also have to consider that when you use your second HotW for the burn at the end, you're spending the part of the fight that has the highest damage multiplier doing something that doesn't scale with mastery in any way.

I'm tempted to say that a Haste/Crit build will still win out because the amount of damage you can put out with a burn phase Hurricane -> Wrath Spam is absurdly large.

Crit I can totally see. Haste I am not convinced because I am not sure if you can really get an extra wrath cast out with current gear. On top of that most fights do require some movement which can lose you the maybe 1 extra cast you could have gotten off. So while a full T14 haste reforge may actually get an extra cast off, I don't think it will happen now.

I also don't like gimping myself on Hit/Exp to reach the high haste numbers. On any fight where you are taken off the boss for any amount of time (all of em) missing a Rake or Rip refresh before leaving is going to suck. I know it did for me on Elegon last week.

While I know it Sims better I just don't think its going to apply to actual raiding right now. If anyone can get Wrath cast numbers and prove me wrong, please do so.

Well, without going too much off topic here I think it's fair to say that Haste's value in SimulationCraft will tend to be fairly volatile, because barring something like a haste Windsong proc (which the sim doesn't use iirc) you're trying to fit a (relatively) fixed cast time spell into a fixed 45 second window.

I'm not convinced though how the simulation's numbers would not transfer into a fight like Elegon. At the beginning of the fight you always have a solid 45 second window where you're able to stand still and spam, with the exception of the 1 jump you must do at some point for the first add, but that 1 jump isn't random so it doesn't make the situation any less controlled. And at the end of the fight, the faster those Hurricane ticks go on the little adds the more damage you're going to be able to mop out of the before them rest of your DPS do, and the after that it's the same case as the beginning, just solid wrath spam. The only thing that would be stopping your wrath spam is you might have some micro-stalls in between wrath to pop CDs (Barkskin, Healthstones, etc).

Looking at the parse I linked above, I did a total of 33.6 million damage with just Wrath and Hurricane which is more than 41% of my total damage. That puts mastery at an incredible disadvantage before you start looking at how bleeds are affected by the damage stack mechanic.

Edit: As far as how many Wraths you can execute in a 45 second window:Using my druid + AskMrRobot for reforging, and then SimC to check my spell haste value:

With the upcoming HotW nerf, I'm wondering how much the average kitty will be pulling on Elegon.

Last night was my first time at Elegon normal 25 and I stupidly didn't use HotW and the Wrath spam that propelled a lot of feral druids (did not research tactics in-depth). I was extremely low on overall DPS being an average 75k DPS (though pretty decent on orbs) and am wondering how to improve this as last night's performance really is unacceptable.

My mistake was following what someone on EJ suggested >_< I'm leaving it as Haste for now since I've got a single night to utilize HoTW before the nerfbat. After maintenance I'll be going to Hit/EXP > Mastery > Crit = Haste

How do you guys deal with the switching? I can barely get to 4 CP on Elegon before the 2nd add spawns (can get the full lot of dots up on him before the 1st add comes up, but after that it does down to the dogs). On the bright side my DPS on the sparks are decent, however overall I'm just doing pretty horrendously.

That was Aggixx suggestion, a fellow fluiddruid-er And his suggestion was exaclty for the wrath-spamming-game-cheating kitty

As for switching usually I can't manage to put up a rip on Ele. It REALLY sucks that in this phase you can't use charge to get back to him (anyone had a similiar bug? or am I just jinxed?). I throw a rake on him and when the sparks spawn I try to put up thrash on all/half of them.

Someday, someone will best me. But it won't be today - and it won't be you.

Viray, the inability to charge is a usual 'bug' with floating bosses we've dealth with over time. It is very sigh worthy.

Dabeasty: those two adds that aoe your raid have to be kited, essentially. They are now nerfed (I believe) to go slower now, but we used to have a tank and a healer kite one outside the other room while the other was tanked at one spot. I believe when he has a debuff he has a nasty aoe when he hits the tank (can be outranged, but a very large radius), so kiting while this debuff is up is how I'm guessing they designed it since they now run slower. If I'm wrong and they AoE the raid without hitting the tank I apologize =P only saw the trash last week.

Same, the feral charge does not work in p2, and it's VERY annoying. I confirm also that putting up rip is a mess, the only solution I can think of is to put 5 CP on a Charge and then redirect them on the boss. But for now I was using the CP to refresh SR (initial charges) or finish them off with FB (final ones).BTW apart from the enrage hitting us because we lack DPS, we have at times some healing problems in phase 3. With HotW nerfed, I plan to try Incarnation+Nature's Vigil. With the boss debuff increasing the damage taken it should also boost my heals. One DPS dying is a lot worse than any DPS% I can lose.

I'm pretty confident in saying that Feline Swiftness is the way to go for this fight, P2 movement is really a lot more important than P1 movement (except maybe if you're on the boss and have to frequently drop your stacks) and if you use Feral Charge any time in P3 it's liable to get you killed very easily.

And a cross-post from the Symbiosis recommendation thread:

aggixx wrote:

Helistar wrote:Ok so I tried Soul Swap on Elegon (for charges) and it sucks. The initial charges you don't care, since they just die, the final ones you don't have the time to put up the dots on the boss.I've gone with SP/Dispersion, which works in reducing the damage from the explosions, saving me some running around, I need to improve on it, since I should turn it on at the last second and then cancelaura, or I lose some time.

Soul Swap is very good for the P1 and P3, not so good for P2.

In P1, if you're on the boss you can Soul Swap your bleeds onto the Protector when it spawns, and since the Protectors spawn every 30 seconds you can synchronize your TF to allow you put bleeds back up on the boss very quickly after you swap your current ones off. If you're on the Protector, then it allows you to not have to worry about the mob dying with your bleeds on it as you can just swap them off to the boss while he's casting Total Annihilation.

In P3, you can swap your bleeds off to a different pillar if you're ahead of someone else on your side.

In P2, it's just not very good, because (at least in my experience) the main goal of P2 is to pump damage into the boss. The adds are just a distraction that you want to minimize your energy spent on, while assuring that they die consistantly, so that you can have maximum bleed uptime on the boss. If you're swapping your bleeds on to the adds you're really just wasting damage. The best you can do with Soul Swap in this phase is swap your Rake off of the Energy Charge onto the boss which saves you 35 energy and should allow you to not have to clip almost an entire rake before you switch to the next add.

The really important thing here is that the key to maximizing your DPS on this fight as feral is bleed uptimes during the wave phase. If you want to do great damage you can't miss out on rolling those bleeds on the boss that's taking anywhere up to 150% more damage. You should be spending as little energy as possible to kill your assigned add (this is much easier to gauge in 10 man) so that you can get back to the boss and try to get enough CP for a rip before the next wave spawns.

Clipping bleeds is the name of the game here, you want to make sure that, at the very least, you have a fresh rake on the boss as you leave for a new wave. If that means that you have to clip 3 ticks of a rake already on the target, do it. The damage you gain from making sure it will be up until you get back is much higher than losing a little bit of direct damage from not using another shred.

This is also one situation that it's ok to cast a <5 cp Rip if you have to. If you get back to the boss and you're able to get to 4cp before the add is about to spawn, feel free to throw a 4cp rip on the boss if you don't need to refresh your Savage Roar. Depending on how many waves you're planning on doing (you should know this ahead of time so you know when you have to have TF ready, if you think you'll need it) you should be able to get at least 1 TF on the boss during the early waves and this should allow you to get a guaranteed 5pt rip going.

If you're just starting on this fight on 10m, your #1 priority for maximizing DPS should be figuring out what you can and can't handle as far as how aggressive you are with spending your resources on the boss. If you're just starting you probably don't want to be going into your last wave with 20 energy and TF on cooldown or you're pretty much destined to fail, but as you get more experienced with fast things accelerate in difficulty you should be able to get a handle on what sort of resources you need to leave yourself to be able to handle each wave, and that will allow you to pump maximum damage into the boss. I personally found that with some practice I was able to spend my resources very very aggressively on the boss and still consistently kill every wave, but I have a feeling this has more to do with my level of gear than my familiarity with the encounter.

Oh and regarding savage roar management, for the most part I have been keeping up Savage Roar almost exclusively from the few combo points I generate on the adds, and Savagery casts while I'm running back to the boss. If you're ever about to energy cap while you're going out to reset your stacks, mash that savage roar button and get a (near) free Savage Roar as your energy should be able to fully regen before you get back to the boss.

I got #1 rank on that kill (by a pretty large margin) and then beat it again this week. Definitely wasn't my best attempt as far as performance goes. I hope to get some better footage sometime and I upload maybe with some commentary, who knows.Sorry for the crappy quality, didn't realize what resolution I was recording in, heh.

Oh and regarding savage roar management, for the most part I have been keeping up Savage Roar almost exclusively from the few combo points I generate on the adds, and Savagery casts while I'm running back to the boss. If you're ever about to energy cap while you're going out to reset your stacks, mash that savage roar button and get a (near) free Savage Roar as your energy should be able to fully regen before you get back to the boss.

I just want to expand on this for DoC users. Every time you are running back from killing your add/resetting stacks you need to hit SR to fish for PS procs. This gets super importent as healing yourself will help ease the healers, but it will also make sure you get both a DoC'd Rake on the boss, it will also let you get one on the add. If you don't get a PS proc make sure to use NS.

For Soul Swap users make sure that you try to refresh Rake and Rip on the first and 3rd Energy Piller just before they die. Then trasnfer those bleeds to Elegon. If you can get TF to line up or NS comes off cooldown don't forget to make use of those.

Ok, after we finally downed it yesterday (ugly affair, but it worked), some more comments:- I confirm Feline Swiftness > Charge. It's just more reliable and always there.- Symbiosis on a Rogue. This allows you to redirect CPs from a Charge to the boss. On the initial ones it's not important, since you have time to build CPs, but for the last ones time is short, and moving 3/4 CPs can allow you to put up an additional Rip. Soul Swap is better for the p1 adds, but we have distance taking care of them.- thanks a lot for the input and ideas, they helped a lot I'm first at DPS (thanks to wrath-spam), but the margin is high enough that I think I would have been first even post-nerf I wonder if it'll still be useful after the nerf, casting from the edge makes life easier early on. At the same time, the p3 healing is heavy, so maybe I'll test Incarnation+Nature's Vigil.

We split into two even groups, each on one side. My group starts dpsing the lowest (nearest to the enterance to the boss) pylon, but with my bleeds & whatnot I usually go drop my bleeds on the middle one, and then proceed on the highest one. Couple of seconds later range join me and all three pillars go down very quickly.

Someday, someone will best me. But it won't be today - and it won't be you.